The Doctor Is In

Introduction

REV.1.

Revelation 1:9–20 ESV

9 I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. 10 I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet 11 saying, “Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.” 12 Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, 13 and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. 14 The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, 15 his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. 16 In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength. 17 When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, 18 and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades. 19 Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this. 20 As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.

I would venture to guess that all of us in here have been going to the doctor our entire lives. The general trend of our doctor visits are like an upside down bell curve. At the front end, when we’re babies, it’s like we’re at the doctor’s office every few months. We’ve got to get this shot and that shot. They’ve got to check our weight, our hearing, our eyesight, and on and on it goes. Then, when we get into our young adult years, we usually feel pretty good and often have to be reminded to go to the doctor for our annual physical. But then, as we get older (the reality I’m beginning to live right now), and stuff starts to break down, it’s like we’re infants again! Except, now that we’ve got jobs we don’t just see a family doctor. We’ve gotta see the ophthalmologist, the cardiologist, the urologist, the podiatrist. Every body part has got its own doctor who’s trying to keep us from falling apart.

I would venture to guess that all of us in here have been going to the doctor our entire lives. The general trend of our doctor visits are like an upside down bell curve. At the front end, when we’re babies, it’s like we’re at the doctor’s office every few months. We’ve got to get this shot and that shot. They’ve got to check our weight, our hearing, our eyesight, and on and on it goes. Then, when we get into our young adult years, we usually feel pretty good and often have to be reminded to go to the doctor for our annual physical. But then, as we get older (the reality I’m beginning to live right now), and stuff starts to break down, it’s like we’re infants again! Except, now that we’ve got jobs we don’t just see a family doctor. We’ve gotta see the ophthalmologist, the cardiologist, the urologist, the podiatrist. Every body part has got it’s own doctor who’s trying to keep us from falling apart.

My point is that it doesn’t matter whether you’re a newborn baby, a young adult in good health, or if you’re among the “more mature” of us in here. Everybody has got to keep going to the doctor. As long as you’re alive, you’ll be in need of having your health diagnosed. You’ll never get past your need for the doctor until…you don’t need a doctor anymore…

The same reality is true when it comes to the church and the Christian faith. You see, we never arrive at perfection as individuals. We always have to be made aware of our areas of unhealth—our sin—the ways in which our hearts are straying or have strayed from God. The same is true of the church as a body. The perfect church doesn’t exist.

In the first eight verses of Revelation, one of the things we find is that Jesus is the king of kings and Jesus is a great high priest. He is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, the ruler of the kings on earth. He is the ruler over all earthly rulers. He is King. And he is the one who loves us, who has freed us from our sins by his blood. He is the Great High Priest who served as both the offeror and the offering. He gave up his life, offering himself to God to make us free from the choke-hold that sin has on us. And when we see Jesus in the verses that we’re looking at this morning, John isn’t offering us something new or different about Jesus, he’s expanding on what he’s already said.

“The Doctor Is In.” Jesus the Ruler and Great High Priest appears here as the one who is able diagnose our condition and provide his prescription. We’ve gotta recognize that the Doctor is always in. Jesus is always present, checking the pulse, diagnosing the health issues, and providing the prescription for renewed health and vitality. So, we’re going to take our text in three paragraphs. Vv. 9-11, we’re going to talk about The Condition of the Patient. In vv. 12-16 we’re going to talk about The Credentials of the Doctor. And in vv. 17-20 we’re going to talk about The Doctor’s Command.

The Condition of the Patient

John says to the churches in v. 9,

Revelation 1:9 ESV

9 I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.

REV1.9

Do you know what it means to be a Christian? You might say, “Yes. To be a Christian means that I’ve repented of my sins and put my faith in Jesus Christ.” And you’d be right. You might say, “Yes. I know what it means to be a Christian. It means that Jesus is my Savior and my Redeemer. He took the punishment for my sins in his sacrificial death on the cross.” And you’d be right. You might be someone who prefers to use the adoption metaphor, and say, “Yes. To be a Christian means that I’ve been adopted into the family of God.” And you’d be right too. All of these and more are ways that the Bible describes what it means to be a Christian. But do you know the most common way the New Testament describes Christians? Over 150 times in the NT Christians are described as those who are “in Christ.” In other words, our union with Jesus Christ is the heart of the gospel, the heart of the Christian life, and the heart of life together as God’s people.

Do you know what it means to be a Christian? You might say, “Yes. To be a Christian means that I’ve repented of my sins and put my faith in Jesus Christ.” And you’d be right. You might say, “Yes. I know what it means to be a Christian. It means that Jesus is my Savior and my Redeemer. He took the punishment for my sins in his sacrificial death on the cross.” And you’d be right. You might be someone who prefers to use the adoption metaphor, and say, “Yes. To be a Christian means that I’ve been adopted into the family of God.” And you’d be right too. All of these and more are ways that the Bible describes what it means to be a Christian. But do you know the most common way the New Testament describes Christians? Over 150 times in the NT Christians are described as those who are “in Christ.” In other words, our union with Jesus Christ is, as HG says, the heart of the gospel, the heart of the Christian life, and the heart of life together as God’s people.

I bring this up because these are the patients I’m talking about when I say, “the condition of the patient.” It’s those who are “in Jesus,” who are united to him by faith. And there’s something about these patients’ condition that we need to realize from this text. John says, I am your brother “in Jesus.” I’m with you, we’re in this thing together united in Jesus. But there’s a particular condition that those who are in Jesus experience. He says, I am your brother and partner in the tribulation and kingdom and patient endurance that are in Jesus. And this trifecta reality of the Christian life, tribulation, kingdom and patient endurance cannot be separated.

You may find yourself in here this morning as someone who’s not “in Jesus.” Even if you’re not a Christian, there’s no better place for you to be this morning. And I wouldn’t have you buy into a false narrative of what it means to follow Jesus. It doesn’t mean that your problems go away and life is now all roses and sunshine.

We’re in Revelation, and when you come to the book of Revelation and Christians here the word “tribulation,” we usually think of some horrible and terrifying time that’s coming. But John isn’t talking about some future disaster. He’s talking about what life in Jesus looks like right now. That tribulation is trouble and distress and suffering and persecution.

Here’s the deal. A few years ago, there was a great panel discussion with some African American Christians at an annual conference called the LDR. The discussion was around seeking peace following the racial tensions that had risen to the surface again after the shooting death of Michael Brown. One white lady, who was taking about what it looked like to spend the last twenty years of her life moving out of her comfort zone towards reconciliation said something profound. She said,

We’re all prosperity gospel people in our hearts. By default we think we have a right to be comfortable and that’s the way it’s supposed to be if life is going to be good. Things are more broken than the Oz of America has taught us to believe.

“We’re all prosperity gospel people in our hearts. By default we think we have a right to be comfortable and that’s the way it’s supposed to be if life is going to be good. Things are more broken than the Oz of America has taught us to believe.”

Kate Bowler is a historian at Duke Divinity School. Last year she published a memoir titled, Everything Happens for a Reason (and other lies I’ve loved). It’s an account of her struggle to understand the personal and intellectual dimensions of the American belief that all tragedies are tests of character. She writes,

What would it mean for Christians to give up that little piece of the American Dream that says, ‘You are limitless’? Everything is not possible. The mighty kingdom of God is not yet here. What if rich did not have to mean wealthy, and whole did not have to mean healed? What if being people of the gospel meant that we are simply people with good news. God is here. We are loved. It is enough.

You see, we’d much prefer it if John described the condition of being “in Jesus” as being our brother and partner in the kingdom that’s in Jesus. We’d much rather the tribulation and patient endurance piece be left out! But this is a triple reality that’s joined together for Jesus’ church in here and now. That’s our condition. Here’s why it’s important. If you keep reading through the next two chapters of Revelation you come across seven churches who are dealing with the trifecta of tribulation, kingdom and patient endurance in different ways and Jesus has to press most of them to embrace this reality and what it means for them.

What would it mean for Christians to give up that little piece of the American Dream that says, ‘You are limitless’? Everything is not possible. The mighty kingdom of God is not yet here. What if rich did not have to mean wealthy, and whole did not have to mean healed? What if being people of the gospel meant that we are simply people with good news. God is here. We are loved. It is enough.

The Doctor’s Credentials

Now if you go to the doctor and the doctor gives you a diagnosis, she says, “this is your condition,” you might not like it. You might not want it to be the case, but she’s been through medical school, residency, is board certified, you see all those certificates on her wall telling you that she’s got credentials to tell you about your condition. We might not always be happy about it, but Jesus can press us on what it means to be in him, united to him because he’s the only one with the credentials to say, “this is the way it’s going to be for those who follow me.”

Now if you go to the doctor and the doctor gives you a diagnosis, she says, “this is your condition,” you might not like it. You might not want it to be the case, but she’s been through medical school, residency, is board certified, you see all those certificates on her wall telling you that she’s got credentials to tell you about your condition. We might not always be happy about it, but Jesus can press us on what it means to be in him, united to him because he’s the only one credentials to say, “this is the way it’s going to be for those who follow me.”

I’m going to get to the doctor’s credentials in just a second, but this messy triad of tribulation (suffering), kingdom (victory in Jesus), and endurance (the need to live and stay in that tension) is all there because Christians aren’t called to live in a monastery—in a commune somewhere separated from the harsh realities of life. And here’s the thing, Tim Keller says it well in his book Center Church, when he says,

The gospel is by no means a sentimental view of life. In fact, the Bible has a darker vision of reality than any secular critic. It tells us that Satan and his legions of demons are at work in the world. (p. 131).

Or, as Richard Lovelace says in his book Dynamics of Spiritual Life,

Humanity in general is afflicted by the destroyer through the structures of injustice and oppression of which the flesh and the devil are joint architects… (p. 140)

So, when the covers are pulled off and we can see the spiritual realities as they are, above everything else, we need to see the doctor and his credentials. John says in v. 10 that he was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day. He is participating in the community of the Holy Spirit on the Lord’s Day, Sunday. And he is about to have his ears and eyes opened and his mind blown.

Revelation 1:10–11 ESV

10 I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet 11 saying, “Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.”

REV1.

Vv. 10-11“I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice, like a trumpet, saying, ‘What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches—to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.”

Then John says, “I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me.” When he turns, what he sees are seven golden lampstands, and in the middle of the lampstands is one like a son of man. What John sees is the reality that the Doctor is in! Jesus will say to John in v. 20 that the seven lampstands are the seven churches. And here is Jesus, right smack dab in the middle of the churches. And this Jesus who is walking about in the middle of the churches doesn’t look like the Jesus who walked about on the streets of Palestine. The Jesus that John sees has the features of the Son of man that the prophet Daniel saw in and particularly . This Son of man, John says,

“was clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength” (13-16).

His face shining like the sun in its full strength, and the sharp double-edged sword leave no doubt that this Son of man is the ruler of the kings on earth. He has the authority and the ability to judge all of creation. But I said that the Doctor is in. We need to sit in the reality that Jesus takes this position in the middle of the churches. What dominates the description is his holiness and his purity that gives him the credentials to be a Great High Priest. That’s the imagery communicated by this long white robe with a golden sash around his chest. He is the ultimate in purity with hair that is white like wool, like snow, and with feet that are like exquisite brass burned in a furnace. He is perfectly suited for this role because his eyes are like a flame of fire. Nothing can escape his penetrating eyes. He searches the minds and hearts of all people.

See the glory of Jesus. But also see the mercy of God. The Doctor is in the middle of the lampstands as the Great High Priest. In the OT there was the temple, and the temple had lampstands. And the priests had a job to do when it came to the lampstands. G. K. Beale reminds us in his commentary that the priests would trim the lamps, they would remove the wick and the old oil, they would refill the lamps with fresh oil, and they would relight those lamps that had gone out. “Likewise,” he says, “Christ tends to the ecclesial lampstands (that is, he looks after the churches, he cares for the churches, he ministers to the churches) by commending, correcting, exhorting and warning in order to secure the churches’ fitness for service as light bearers in a dark world.”

The Doctor’s Command

Jesus is tending to his churches to make his people fit for service as light bearers in a dark world…When we were going through Revelation in Bible Study last year, every week I would ask the question, “what is the central focus of Revelation.” The central focus of Revelation is to exhort the Christian community to continue witnessing to Christ in the midst of a compromising and idolatrous church and world. It isn’t just outside the Christian community that you find idolatry and compromise. It’s inside the Christian community too. That’s because there’s plenty of darkness and trouble in this world.

Jesus tending to his churches to make his people fit for service as light bearers in a dark world…When we were going through Revelation in Bible Study last year, every week I would ask the question, “what is the central focus of Revelation.” The central focus of Revelation is to exhort the Christian community to continue witnessing to Christ in the midst of a compromising and idolatrous church and world. It isn’t just outside the Christian community that you find idolatry and compromise. It’s inside the Christian community too. That’s because there’s plenty of darkness and trouble in this world.

Sometimes we would have these dinners…Progressive Dinner question…If there’s one thing you could ask God to change what would it be?…We would ask that question, and there’d be plenty of responses because everybody knows that things are jacked up in this world. And some of it scares us. In that same book, Center Church, Tim Keller makes the point that,

We live in the first era of history that considers happy endings to be works of inferior art. Modern critics [movie, art, etc.] insist that life is not like that — rather, it is full of brokenness, paradox, irony and frustration (p. 131).

If you want to win an Oscar, don’t make a fairy tale, make a dark movie and the critics will love you. We see the darkness of real evil like the murder of Muslim image bearers in New Zealand this week. We see the darkness of racism still alive and well in our own country in the tensions that have exploded over the past few years. These things seem to be so overwhelming and there’s too much trouble in the world for us to get our minds around it all.

Here’s how evil works. Karen Ellis is the Director of the Center for Culture and Ethnicity at Reformed Theological Seminary. Her particular area research and focus is on the persecuted church. In a podcast interview a few years back, she mentioned an article in the Washington Post written by a woman named Souad Mekhennet. Souad was a visiting fellow at Harvard, Johns Hopkins and the Geneva Center for Security policy. The article’s headline is “Even the Islamists of ISIS are obsessing over Ferguson.” She goes on to write about how the Islamists of ISIS are trying to use Ferguson and social media to recruit disenfranchised young black men.

“Blacks in #Ferguson, there’s an alternative to this indignity: pick yourselves up with Islam like #IS in #Iraq. #jihadinamerica #ISISHERO.”

The dark worlds were colliding. Karen Ellis asks the question, how is this not a pastoral issue, an issue for the church? The triad of tribulation, kingdom and patient endurance are real because Jesus would have his people engaging the disenfranchised young men with other hashtags. Like #Proverbs1:10, “My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent.” In other words, to come with Jesus as light in the world is messy.

But I love this this last point I want to make from this text. The Doctor’s Command. Things like what Souad writes about can make us afraid. But the Doctor has the credentials to issue a command in vv. 17-18,

Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was dead and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.

Here’s why I love this command, this prescription that Jesus gives to John. What had John afraid? It wasn’t the tribulation. It was Jesus! John says in the first part of v. 17, “When I saw him I fell at his feet as though dead.” This vision of Jesus, the great high priest, glorious in majesty, full of splendor and awe, shook John to the very core of his being. He was like Isaiah in , who saw the Lord and said, “I am undone!” John says, I fell at his feet like I was dead. With a view to the majesty of Jesus, the fear of this dark world was no where in view. Jesus puts his hand on John and says, do not fear. Can I tell you something? It’s not a stretch to say that’s the whole book! If you are in Jesus, do not fear. He is the first and the last. He is the living one. He was dead, but he didn’t stay dead. He got up from the grave and he is alive forevermore. And he is the key holder. He is the Ancient of Days and he’s in control over all the forces of death. He will say to church #6, the church in Philadelphia, in 3:7, “The words of the holy one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one will open.”

How do you live in this dark world? You don’t live denying the darkness, as if it’s not real. You don’t live in seclusion, building up walls, hoping the darkness will never penetrate. The movie critics are right. Don’t give me fairy tales because the darkness has an impact on everyone. You live in this dark world in Jesus. Michael Wilcock, The Message of Revelation,

“[You] learn to link in your mind the church as [you] see it, lamps that gleam here and there across the dark world, ever seemingly threatened by extinction, and the Church as Christ shows it, a cluster of inextinguishable stars in the hand of their creator. [You] are able to face the tribulation, because of what [you] know of the kingdom: to confront the storm, because [your] foundations are deep in the rock. ‘The tribulation and the kingdom’ produce ‘the patient endurance.’”

This dining table is the feast in Jesus. It is the meal of the tribulation, kingdom and patient endurance that are in Jesus…

John says to the churches in v. 9,